


The Beginning of the World

by plumandfinch



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-19 17:16:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4754624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumandfinch/pseuds/plumandfinch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are each absorbed in the latest report when they hear the sounds of the war ending.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A little fix-it AU for roboticonography, who is having a bad day and whose work has made many a bad day here better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They are each absorbed in the latest report when they _hear_ the sounds of the war ending. She’ll remember it, later and always, in bursts. The swoop of her stomach when Dum Dum effortlessly swings her through the air, the quaking of Dernier’s shoulders as he silently weeps, the brisk, iron-like squeeze from Phillips, surprising them both. And Steve, _oh Steve_ , who manages to look both seven and ninety all at once, his face a profound mix of exhaustion and sheer joy. They find each other in the flurry, of course, and the moment in his brief, professional embrace settles something in her chest. There continue to be handshakes, hugging, and miraculous champagne appears, as do the boys from the lab. Howard brazenly kisses her full on the lips which garners a tightening of the large hand that she finds has been intertwined with her own for some time. Howard kisses Steve too, a greedy smack on the cheek, before bounding off to find another drink. Steve looks so shellshocked, she laughs, long and easy, joy loosened by the champagne.

 

Phillips stands on a chair, a toast is made, a reminder given that they are far from finished and then they are ceremoniously given the remainder of the day off. She cries finally when Falsworth pulls them all into the crowd in front of the Palace. Everywhere she looks, people are streaks of sound and color and it’s not until she feels the warmth of Steve’s hand on the small of her back and the heaving of her own chest that she realizes tears are spilling down her face. He takes her out for a pie and a pint in the madness and she belatedly realizes that they’re having their first date at the beginning of the world.

 

In the haze of the very early morning, she lets his glorious mouth make it all the way down to her collarbone and his hands tantalizingly to her breasts before she breathes his name in warning in the empty hallway outside of her quarters. They spend another small infinity saying goodnight and she’ll always remember the way his eyes feel devouring her the following morning, as they all get back to work.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They have their first argument in a storage closet off one of the narrow hallways.

They have their first argument in a storage closet off one of the narrow hallways. She hisses many things, among them the word ‘professional’, with fists clenched, and he argues as he does everything else, all honest eyes and flinty earnestness. It was about a lot of things really, that fight. Balancing the change between what had always been rumored and what was true. The unending slog, long past the finish line of VE Day, to the _actual_ end of this godforsaken war. Their strained lunch with, of all people, Peggy’s mother, who calls her only Margaret and uses the term “war bride” in a way that raises red along the top of Peggy’s cheek bones.

And then there is intel on Hydra tech to recover at one of the camps.

They all go, to the stretch of hell outside of Munich, and catalog and box up and label what they find there. None of them speak afterwards or for a long time after they land in London. Dugan disappears for a day and a half, Jones starts spending his time in the chapel around the corner, Steve stops sleeping.

She forgets how they end up in the closet. Her own beleaguered sleep is marred by pieces of nightmares, both real and imagined, that jolt her awake. Steve looks worse than he has almost the entire war, with the singular exception of the week after the Valkyrie crash, when it takes them four treacherous days to find him. He doesn’t rise to any of her bait but keeps his tone clipped, which leaves her monstrous and aching to actually hit him. She feels a shift in the pressure that has been building in her chest for days and finally throws up spectacularly in the small wastepaper basket by the door.

  
It’s the end of it then; he crouches beside her, running a hand up and down her spine until she stops retching. They sit in silence and she curls up with her head in his lap, on the cool concrete. Sometime later she feels the rumble of his chest as he quietly laughs. “You won’t win every argument that way, you know,” he says, in a voice that sounds like his again. She laughs too then, shakily, feeling again that they will somehow find a way forward.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sensing his team’s exhaustion, Phillips gives them all two unprecedented days of leave.

Sensing his team’s exhaustion, Phillips gives them all two unprecedented days of leave. Steve appears in the doorway of her small office and with a gleam in his eye that she hasn’t seen in weeks, gives her one hour to pack a small bag and instructions on where in the train station to meet. She arrives breathless, in civilian clothes and takes immediate advantage of being out of uniform to settle her hand in his. 

 

The owner of the small hotel by the sea is harried and apologetic about most things. There are landmines on the beach, the hamlet’s best restaurant was destroyed at the beginning of the war, the two rooms that he has available are the smallest as they are still inundated by people displaced in the madness.

 

They end up with sandwiches and two heavy thermoses of scalding hot tea. It’s quiet on their part of the pavilion, just the crashing of the sea and a lone swooping gull. 

 

“I’ve never asked,” he breaks the silence, “what do you want to do after all this is over?” 

 

It’s what has been bothering her, how does he know? The question she has been unable to answer. She came of age in a desperate world, what does she know how to do in peace? She must look utterly hopeless because he drapes one arm around her shoulder and one around her waist. She drops her head comfortably against his shoulder in this unfamiliar place.

 

“Well” his voice rumbles in his chest, “I’m going back to Brooklyn myself. Maybe I’ll stay with the Army, if they’ll have me. I imagine this war won’t be the end.” 

 

“No, I suppose not.” She lets some minutes pass. “Perhaps the SSR would keep me.” 

 

“You might have to move to New York.”

 

She feels his heartbeat speed up under her hand. 

 

“I might, yes.” 

  
He hums non-committedly and it’s the last they speak of it on their stolen holiday. They are, neither of them, very good at not having something to do. They walk and walk and Steve finds a stationers and he sketches until she demands that they eat. Even here, they are conscious of the other guests so although they spend two breathless hours back on the quiet side of the pavilion, Steve gallantly escorts her to her room before reluctantly going to his. She dreams of his hands and he kisses her wholeheartedly one last time in the station in London before they make their separate ways back to base. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s the last Hydra outpost and that’s a good thing - she thinks as she breathlessly hurtles down a long hallway, guns blazing - because she’s had just about enough of this.

It’s the last Hydra outpost and that’s a good thing - she thinks as she breathlessly hurtles down a long hallway, guns blazing - because she’s had just about enough of this. An explosion in the distance marks the third step in their plan, Morita’s confirmation of that fact crackles across the radio. She mows down two Hydra goons who are foolish enough to step in front of her and she’s almost to the storeroom door when she feels it. The force of the two shots knock her off balance and a desperate noise claws out of her throat. She doesn’t remember how it happens but she turns as she falls and fires at the guard who is already a blur. He goes down as she does, hitting the hard floor with another groan. _Pressure_ , _pressure_ , she thinks hazily, that’s what one is supposed to do with a wound. She feels the hot, slick, wetness under her and the fire. But she can’t move and her head has started to pound with the rhythm of the boots thudding down the corridor as her eyes flutter shut.

 

\--

Steve is several buildings away when Jones’ voice snaps over the radio. “Carter’s down. Carter’s down. Morita, I need you by the storeroom”. He doesn’t realize that he’s able to move faster than he already is, taking down his targets and launching himself across the courtyard. Another building blows as he shoots through the door at the end of the corridor where he sees them clustered. Dugan’s there by then, and fear that Steve has never seen before echoes on each of their faces. Morita moves and he sees her ghastly color.

 

“Cap! Listen, I’m gonna pick her up. I need you to shield us.” Dugan already has his arms under her as he barks out instructions. Steve doesn’t trust himself to say anything so he nods and they’re off, sprinting back to the trucks. He feels the concussion of the second to last blast as they heave her into the truck and take off.

 

\--

It’s the chill when they remove her jacket that she feels first, followed immediately by rake of pain down her right side. She groans out a string of expletives and slides her eyes open to the relieved faces of the Commandos. “That’s our girl” says Dugan, gruffly and Steve quietly takes her uninjured hand in his.

 

Her head is still throbbing and she is grateful when the truck slows in a small village and the boys leap out to gather food and supplies. She squeezes Steve’s hand, which has not left hers. He breaks the silence suddenly, “Marry me, Peggy.” His voice seems much louder in the relative quiet of the truck. She blinks several times to bring his worried face into focus as her heart pounds in her chest.

 

“Steven Grant Rogers, you idiot. I have been shot, I must look a fright, we’re in the back of a blasted truck in the middle of nowhere, the boys will be back at any moment, and this is when you decide to propose?”

 

He has the grace to look bashful and it is then that the Commandos noisily clamber back into the truck. As they jostle back into their seats, he hears a quiet “Yes” and whips his head around to look back at her. She gives him a watery smile and a gentle squeeze of the hand before letting her eyes drift shut again.

 

Dugan digs an elbow into his side. “That’s some grin ya got on there, Rogers, is there something you’re wanting to tell us about?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They are married by a Methodist, he the Irish-Catholic and she the Anglican, in the small chapel on the base just outside of London.

They are married by a Methodist, he the Irish-Catholic and she the Anglican, in the small chapel on the base just outside of London. Steve thinks they’ll both wear their uniforms so it feels like a hit by his pre-serum asthma when she appears at the end of the short aisle on Phillips’ arm, in simple white, with gardenias in her hair. Betty, a friendly, sharp-tongued codebreaker, had turned out to also be a dab hand with a needle and the quartermaster had looked the other way when she and Peggy abscond with several crisp sheets.

 

Steve asks Dugan to stand in as his best man, but she notices, as they approach the front, that Dum Dum has left a respectful, almost undetectable space for the best man who should be there.

 

The ceremony is short and simple and what she remembers most are his eyes and the gentle scent of pine that drifts off of the simple sprays draped across the altar. Then it is done, she is Mrs. Rogers, although the Commandos will call Steve ‘Mr. Carter’ for weeks to come. They stand in the watery sunlight waiting for the photographer, comparing their new bands, and he staunchly refuses to remove his hand from her waist.

 

The entire base had given up dessert for a week in order to produce the magnificent three tiered cake with a red, white and blue shield gaily stenciled onto the top layer. The Commandos produce unheretofore seen amounts of whiskey and gin and procure a small dance band. Everyone claims a dance with the bride, the women are severely outnumbered and she is incandescent, but she demands Steve every time the band plays something slow. It is their third turn around the floor, all professional pretense long since dropped, she is savoring the warmth of his palm on the back of her rib cage and he the way her hand possessively claims his own.

 

Phillips has a friend, they discover at the end of the evening, who has a secluded cottage just off of the base and who was more than willing to lend it to America’s favorite war hero.

 

\--

“How was that, then?”, Mrs. Steven Rogers cheerfully inquires before he has a chance to open his eyes. He opens them then to find his disheveled bride with her head on his chest and a decidedly dangerous glint in her eye.

 

He flips her over in one deft movement, his weight pinning her gently to the mattress, as he lays a line of featherlight kisses from her earlobe to her collarbone and murmurs something to the effect of “practice makes perfect”.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They come into her office, the three of them and Phillips, and that’s how she knows.

They come into her office, the three of them and Phillips, and that’s how she knows. They are two weeks from being sent home and Steve and Jones don’t make the rendezvous point. The extraction team circles around twice, but they have vanished.

 

She almost thinks that Phillips will stop her. And he almost does, as he stands next to the bullet-ridden Spitfire. But after she’s clambered into her seat, he gives the aircraft a couple of firm slaps, like one would a horse, and she’s off.

 

Howard sends her with a couple of his latest inventions and she catches up with the extraction team in a small village just above the Belarusian border. It’s cold, even in the small hotel where they’ve constructed their war room, and she’s glad of it because she knows it will keep her sharp.

 

Or at least that’s what she thinks until their leads dry up and they chase one too many dead ends and they get not a message, but an actual escort to bring them home. The concierge’s wife presses a small icon into her hand as she is leaving the hotel and it’s that picture of garnet and gold that she studies on the silent flight back to London, memorizing every brushstroke.

 

Many years later, at a museum fundraiser, she’ll hear someone say that to create an icon, the artist faithfully slides on layer and layer and layer and layer of paint, which is what creates the richness of color. She will think back to that desolate flight and remember only that she got lost there, in all that paint.

 

It’s in slow motion that she watches the last of the file boxes be packed for shipment stateside. That she boxes up the contents of their temporary flat, where she has not stayed since she came back. That she waits. For news, for her next orders, for him.

 

Her mother simpers insincerely that she should stay in London. Howard offers much more sincerely to fly her to the States himself. She declines both invitations and steps off the gangplank in a roar of noise and confetti.

 

Peacetime is not what she expected. Phillips gets sent to Washington, Howard takes up with girls and the high-life, and she finds herself filing. Gabe’s mother comes, just once, to the office of all places. She cries quietly next to Peggy’s desk in a way that makes Peggy’s face burn and chest constrict. After Mrs. Jones leaves, she quietly takes the rest of the afternoon off.

 

It’s the fall on the east coast that she finds the most reassuring. It occurs to her one morning that it eases her homesickness for the war which makes her feel both soothed and guilty. When she arrived months ago, Howard proffered his most demure residence, an offer she mutely accepted (she didn’t have much of a choice, she’ll explain later, the car from the docks had already pulled up to the building when he mentioned it). They don’t speak much now; Howard had appeared on her doorstep at two in the morning, plastered and borderline incoherent. It was then she finds out about his searches. The increasingly dangerous trips to Eastern Europe. With shaking hands, she calls Jarvis to come fetch him, trying to make her voice louder than Howard’s insistent refrain. “ _I can’t find him, Peg. I just can’t find him. I can’t find him_ ”.

 

She has the locks changed the next day and doesn’t see Howard again for three months.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was a rainy Wednesday evening in November that she was determined to spend poring over intercepted intelligence. Jarvis had called.

It was a rainy Wednesday evening in November that she was determined to spend poring over intercepted intelligence. Jarvis had called. They needed her help with something. It was urgent, his voice strained and distant. Gun in her purse, sturdy shoes on, coat flapping, she had swung down the stairs and into the waiting car. 

 

So now she stands in a dripping abandoned hangar looking across a long distance to where her eyes make out the unmistakable shape of her husband. 

 

She finds the cool concrete of the floor under her hands and remembers the first time in training that her opponent got a good punch in aimed at her solar plexus. She is barely aware of Jarvis offering her a hand as she pushes herself back to standing and vaults towards Steve, aching to cross the space between them. She vaguely registers the shouts and it’s not until she’s been pummeled that she realizes they were directed at her. Her first disoriented thought is that she’s been hit by a truck or a slab of concrete. Are they still in the war? Then she remembers Steve.  _ He’s here _ . There seems to be a lot of noise but she can hear him, muffled in the distance. Even then she can hear the panic in his voice. She grunts and shifts under the weight, finally blinking her eyes open, only to find that she is under neither vehicle nor slab. Her eyes meet a pair filled with rage and panic, a whirlwind of hulking weight and disheveled, filthy hair. 

 

They look at each other. 

  
“Barnes?” she says, barely above a whisper. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It hurts every time she moves.

It hurts every time she moves. Pain cracks across her midsection, her ankle won’t hold any weight, and she feels a bruise blooming up and over the two old wounds in her shoulder. Her head pounds and there is a distinct ache in her heart that she refuses to examine. There had been a miscommunication. Barnes was supposed to be in the small room off the hangar. Steve’s voice is raised, she hears it over the thump in her head. Jarvis is contrite and Barnes repeats his apologies quietly, desperately earnest. 

 

She had seen something change in his eyes, when she said his name. He had been off of her in an instant, backing away, scrabbling across the floor, away from her. “Ca-c-c-c-carter.” 

 

\--

 

They stand across from each other in the cavernous living room. She barely has it in her to stand but if she sits, she’ll give in. So she stands. 

 

“This is not about Barnes,” she grits out. 

 

“His name is James. The war is over, Peggy.” 

  
“Is it? Because you-,” she swallows, “you-, were gone. I looked for you and you-” She feels again the air rush out of her lungs and instinctively reaches out for him. The feel of his warm hands on her waist and the familiar landscape of his upper arms under her own is her undoing. She lets him pull her into his broad chest and feels the whisper of his apologies on her hair.

 

\--

 

V-E Day had marked the decisive shift in their relationship. And it starts not long after. She finds the first one in her briefing folder. It’s her own face, caught in laughter and the candlelight of the pub. The detail takes her aback and she spends more time than she cares to admit studying the miniature portrait. She lays down several nights later and hears the crackle of paper. From under her pillow (she wonders idly how he managed this) she pulls a larger piece. It’s one of the only times she’s glad the other girls are on duty because her bark of laughter is quite loud when she turns the paper over to find a full page action shot of her punching Hodge at Camp Lehigh, what feels like a lifetime ago. Their first Valentine’s Day, there’s a sappy card that inexplicably features Phillips’ head on Cupid’s body which makes her laugh until there are tears. After a mission, there’s a rough sketch of her in action, sharp-angled and invincible. 

Sometimes he adds himself or the team. She never sees the dancing monkey again but if he goes on a mission without her, he brings back a small stack of moments, captured on the back of old memos, scraps of cardboard, propaganda leaflets, burnt edge pages of books that he finds on the roadside. Monty tells her once of the one time he lost his pencil and not one Commando had a writing implement. “It was a sight to see, to be sure” is all the composed Englishman would say. She noticed after that, that everyone’s packs included a motley assortment of pens and pencils.  

She awakes two mornings after their wedding to find two sketches side by side, one of her appearance at the end of the aisle and one that she has to study for a moment before she realizes it’s his view of her in the mornings, curls and bare shoulder draped across his chest. 

When he and Jones disappear she cannot bear to look at them. But the ragged folder makes every move with her and it’s that, of all of her meager possessions, that she fiercely protects. 

Now he is back, and when she awakes battered and aching from her reunion with Barnes, she finds not her husband but a worn notebook on the pillow next to hers. She gingerly sits up and pulls it open to the first page. She is not surprised to find her own face, distant in concentration, sitting squarely on the paper. 

What cracks her heart is that she is on  _ every _ page. Peggy laughing, Peggy asleep, Peggy shooting, Peggy studying a map. A detailed rendering of their ride to the lab that changed him sprawls across two whole pages; he looking terribly small and hollow and she luminescent. Some pages are full of several quick studies, some she can tell he took painstaking care to commit. 

She doesn’t notice he has come into the room until the bed dips under his weight. It’s then too that she realizes the reason the pages have become hard to make out is that she is crying. They look at each other and she expects him to wrap his arms around her but he instead just watches and she cries. He finally looks down at the notebook in her hands.

“I’m so sorry, Peggy. I had to. But I’m sorry that I couldn’t have told you and I’m mostly sorry that I have hurt you so much. I missed you terribly.” 

She nods towards the notebook, “I can see that.” 

He sighs very quietly and she can feel the tension in his chest. She looks down at her own face and finds herself concentrating on breathing. 

“Please don’t ever do that again.” she whispers, hating how broken she sounds. 

His solid, warm hand gently rests on her cheek and she involuntarily leans forward until their foreheads meet. 

  
“I promise,” he says. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She forgets how easy it is to fall asleep with him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Steggyweek2k16, Day 4: Domesticity

She forgets how easy it is to fall asleep with him. Her leg tucked neatly between his, his massive arms tucking her against his chest. She wakes up in the early morning feeling more rested than she can remember and they languorously make love for the first time since he has returned. She falls apart in a slow and all-consuming way that leaves her shaky and falls asleep again, her head in the hollow of his shoulder.

 

When she wakes again, the sun is coming much more insistently through the curtains and she finds herself ravenous for two specific things. This time they both drive toward something unnamed, hard and fast, and even his mouth on hers doesn't stop her shouting at the last. 

 

She’s also forgotten how luxurious it feels to stay quietly draped across his chest feeling the movement of breath in and out of his lungs. They are here when her stomach makes a very unappetizing gurgle. 

 

“Work up an appetite, Peg?”

 

He is rewarded with a smouldering kiss that leaves them both breathless before she looks almost apologetic.

 

“I am quite famished, darling”

 

He kisses her nose and extracts himself from her arms before hopping out of bed and throwing on pajamas. 

 

“Well, you hang tight for a moment and we’ll see if we can sort you out.”

 

He’s halfway across the room before he turns back and kneels over her for another lingering kiss. 

 

“In fact, doll, I believe that we should spend the day sorting you out.” 

 

“Oh?” she manages to breathe out. 

 

“You betcha. First up is breakfast and then we’ll go from there.”


End file.
